Manage your subscription

Hurricane cycle yet to reach its peak

25 September 2004

Hurricane-battered residents of the Caribbean, Florida and Alabama are facing another 10 or 20 bad years of high hurricane activity – and it’s not due to global warming.

Hurricanes have been on the increase over the past decade as part of a natural multi-decadal cycle (New Scientist, 27 September 2003, p 14). Hurricanes are more likely to form when the Atlantic is warm, as it was in the 1930s to 1960s. The decades since the 1960s saw fewer hurricanes, but numbers have risen since 1995 and may not have reached the predicted peak yet.